Hugo Pratt wrote, drew, and travelled a lot. His love for adventure and far away locations (mainly African deserts and tropical seas) can be admired in many of his published stories.
Una ballata del mare salato (The Ballad of the Salty Sea), published in 1967, marks the first appearance of Corto Maltese1 and is considered by some as the first graphic novel2.
Even if most of his comic books are in black and white, Pratt loved watercolour and he used it profusely to enrich his sketches.
Footnotes
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Frank Miller, author of Daredevil: Born Again, The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, Ronin, and 300 loves the Corto Maltese so much that he created a fictional island for DC Comics in his name and he’s going to direct an animated TV show with him as main character. ↩
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A Contract with God, by Will Eisner, which came out in 1978 “attracted greater attention […] partly due to Eisner’s greater status in the comics community. It is considered a milestone in American comics history not only for its format, but also for its literary aspirations and for having dispensed with typical comic-book genre tropes.” The same can be said for Corto Maltese’s first story, which came out 11 years before. ↩